Actress Julie Walters has revealed for the first time her battle through the menopause.

Plagued with hot flushes and sleepless nights, the Smethwick-born actress suffered for seven years.

She says that one of her toughest challenges was playing her Bafta winning role of Mrs Wilkinson, the chain-smoking dance teacher in 2001 film Billy Eliot.

“During the day, I felt weepy, bloated and fuzzy-headed. I couldn’t remember my steps,” she said.

“People would look at me and say ‘It was only 30 seconds’, but it felt really difficult. I didn’t break down on set.

“I’d walk off because I didn’t want Jamie (Jamie Bell, who played Billy) to see me upset.

“I’d sidle off for a cry.”

She added: “Stephen Daldry, the director, knew. He was lovely. He’d say: ‘Come on, let’s have a cup of tea.’ I’m sure everyone else was thinking: ‘What the hell’s the matter with her?’”

Julie, has won two Oscar nomination, first for Educating Rita in which she starred with Michael Caine in 1983, and then for Billy Elliot.

She has also won a clutch of BAFTAs and, last year she was awarded a CBE.

“Sometimes it’s decaffeinated coffee that sets me of, or even just thinking of a part I’m worried about. I’ll get a flush,” she added.

“It started when I was doing a play at the National. I used to shout ‘the tray’ and they’d rush off, find this tin tray and wave it in the air in front of me to cool me off. At one stage, I was waking up 15 times a night with flushes. It was deadly because sleep is vital.”

Julie, aged 58, speaks about the challenges in her frank new autobiography, in which she also reveals a terrifying paedophile attack as she played as a children in the garden of a derelict house.

She also details a dizzying trip on LSD during her time at the Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre in the Seventies, which left her determined to never touch the drug again.

Julie was raised in a working-class home in Smethwick with her strict catholic parents and two elder brothers.

She now lives with her husband Grant Roffey, on an organic farm in Sussex which he manages. They have been together for 23 years and have a 20-year-old daughter Masie.